


Sankofa

by Sin_of_the_Fallen



Series: Works in Second Person POV [2]
Category: Iron Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Sentinel
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Sentinels & Guides, Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, Human Experimentation, Implied Relationships, Mad Scientist, Minor Character Death, Non-Explicit Descriptions of a Mad Scientist's Work, POV Second Person, Pilot Story, Potential Relationships, Reader-Insert, References to Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet References, Romeo and Juliet- The AU Version, Sentinel Senses, Sentinel/Guide Bonding, Shakespeare In A Alternate Universe, Worldbuilding, reader - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-08-04
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:41:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1668410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sin_of_the_Fallen/pseuds/Sin_of_the_Fallen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sankofa:(n.)(phr.) "Go back and fetch it;" we must look back to the past so that we may understand how we became what we are, and move forward to a better future.</p>
<p>In a world full of Sentinels, Guides, mutants, and who knows what else, you happen to be a Guide; a unbonded Guide. It's not the easiest path you could have had, but it's all you know and your dreams are bound up in it.<br/>------------<br/>This is probably the first attempt at using a Second Person POV in such a crossover, but I took my hand to it because I think the idea is pretty neat and I wanted to see how it could go. It turned out better than I thought it would, longer too. </p>
<p>And you've gotta admit, if you were in this universe you too would totally dig your spirit animal too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Sometimes you wonder why you hadn’t fought harder to stay in your mother’s womb. Gross, yes, but it is one of those days where it seems like a valid question to pose to yourself. It certainly did not help that this was just another too-long-disaster-of-a-day in a long line of similar days.

Being a Guide sucked. Hell, being you right now sucked.

It had to be admitted though, this trend of horrible fortune was fairly recent. As a Guide, life had never been quite as normal as you could have hoped for. Not to say Guides and their Sentinels were unnatural or anything like that. Your kind was part and parcel with humanity, had been around as long as humans; but it was difficult sometimes. The Sentinel and Guide population hovered anywhere around 5 to 10 percent of the total human population, and discrimination against your kind tended to be pretty rare. But having any strength at all in your gifts meant life was difficult, no matter what everyone else did or didn’t do.

Empathy was not a very beneficial superpower to have in your humble opinion, nor was having to ensure you didn’t start incapacitating people by accidentally projecting your emotions everywhere. And you would tell anyone who said otherwise to suck it. They didn’t have to feel every dark emotion and tumultuous joy ricochet inside of _their_ skull.

It was just as well empathy had been your weakest aspect as a Guide. Though what talent you did possess in it was enough to leave you with a near permanent ache in your gray matter, and make you easy to distract. Alas, if only your ability to project emotions had been just as dismal.

Nobody understood why your projection abilities were 1.5 standard deviations above the average Guide’s, especially when your empathy was terrible, and you didn’t have a clue either. You had always taken more pride in your adeptness of the spiritual powers of Guides and your talent in grounding zoned out and feral Sentinels. You were so proud of these talents, proud enough that you had been training to go into the medical field as a specialized Guide who could deal with ravaged and unbonded Sentinels(particularly Sentinels that were in the military and such.)

It was a demanding job, one where your talents sparkled like polished diamonds on display. Few Guides ever chose to pursue this kind of work, for most Guides had more empathy than you, and even then they had to be Bonded already. Unbonded Guides with any empathy to speak of  found it nearly impossible to do, and accordingly, exceedingly few ever even tried. You happened to be one of those few.

Yes, you _were_ unbonded. And it wasn’t _really_ because you were one of those Guides waiting for their perfect match, the match they may or may not ever find. Even those Guides had pretty good chances nowadays though, what with all the DNA tests and the meet-and-greets receiving a fat dollop of government funding.

In fact, Bonding rates, especially with those who were true matches, had never been higher. With the relative ease of global transportation and communications, many pairings separated by continents and land barriers came into fruition. Governments had a nearly perfect cooperation rate when it came to the UN think tank that cataloged all known Sentinels and Guides and tried to figure out the science behind perfect matches and the varying abilities; it had become a major success too.

Of course, you have had no luck finding _any_ Sentinel matches, let alone the perfect one.

No Sentinel called to you, and many had asked, privately, if you had felt an answering pull, a returning suggestion of “This may be _them_.” It was always so painful to turn down those Sentinels, weak, powerful, exceptional, and common alike, to know you didn’t even have the option to try and Bond with someone you had Affinity with.

Again, yes you would seriously have considered some of those offers of courtship, even though they were no more your perfect match than you were theirs. But Bonding needed even the smallest tug of Affinity (that tug of **_desire/want/need/hope_** you never felt,) to work. Without it, there could be no Bond. Some considered the idea of Bonding with those you only had Affinity with abhorrent, but you knew a perfect match guaranteed very little, let alone love.

You had sought answers as to why you never felt Affinity with anyone, but the best guesses were just that; guesses. Some speculated you were a forerunner of a change in Guides. That Guides would no longer be able to Bond on Affinity alone, perhaps not even at all if you never found your true match. Some pointed to your stunted empathy in light of how you were better than the average Guide in nearly everything else, deciding that you simply couldn’t feel the Affinity, though it was there. But no one knew for certain.

In the end, the speculation petered off, with only a last suggestion of trying to meet Professor Xavier as a final bid to understanding your troubles. You never did contact the famous mutant. Too many of your instincts as a Guide went into a frenzied panic at the idea of allowing the polite telepath to traverse where only your Bonded should be.

But no matter how you protested how it was nothing to worry over, for you were a Guide and not a Sentinel, and that you could survive unbonded (theoretically) for the rest of your life... People pitied and fretted over you, as though you were missing a vital organ only they could discern. It was beyond irritating.

 

Privately you blamed Shakespeare's damn _Romeo and Juliet_ for tossing out the idea Guides were capable of living unbonded, and romanticizing the whole perfect match thing unduly. Oh wonderful! Just thinking the name made you start to remember it again.

Young foolish Romeo, so sad, so fraught with angst at being a unbonded Guide, decides that to end his unbearable agony he will Bond with a Sentinel woman, Lady Rosaline, he has a decent amount of Affinity with. He expresses his desire to set up a marriage contract and Bonding with both Rosaline and his parents; though later he monologues over how cruel fate is to have denied him the perfect completion and love only his One True Match could give him, and how Rosaline will fail to measure up in every way.

 

Then he tells his friends about his upcoming nuptials, a mixed cast of Bonded and ordinary men, and they convince him he needs one last night out before giving himself over to Rosaline.Of course, their idea for Romeo’s last hurrah is to crash the Capulet’s celebration of their young, beautiful, powerful Sentinel daughter Juliet coming into her majority. After that, everyone knows what happens.

 

Romeo and Juliet’s eyes meet and they know instantly they are one another’s perfect match. Juliet drags off her newly discovered Guide, and depending on who conducts the play, she either kisses the life out of Romeo or has her wicked way with him.

Then once the lust haze clears from their joyous minds, they both confess neither are actually free to pursue this. Juliet is engaged to Paris, a Guide with enough Affinity to justify marrying him in order to seal an alliance and trade agreement. Romeo’s Rosaline is meeting with his parents on the morrow to hammer out the advantageous marriage contract.

Then their well known stupidity ensued. Romeo and Juliet marry and Bond in secret, tell neither of their feuding families, accidentally kill each other's fiancee, and end up dying horribly and tragically.

And no, you could not be convinced otherwise. If people could believe Romeo and Juliet was one of the greatest love stories of all time, you could blame it for acting as the catalyst for enacting the societal shift against Bonding with someone you only had Affinity with (despite whatever reasons are behind such a personal choice.)

But that was a old hurt to you, one that never healed, one that never would until you found your match. Yet it was not the cause behind your terrible luck. What had caused your streak of terrible days was the fact you were 1.5 standard deviations above the average Guide in projecting. 1.4 standard deviations was the cut-off point for that bastard scientist, the one who kidnapped and experimented on you.

Of course, to complicate matters, the asshole kept you unconscious the entire time; meaning you still aren’t sure just _what_ he did to fuck with the parts of your brain that housed your Guide gifts. They, the government, told you he had you for six months. That if he hadn’t taken you, one of the precious medical Guides the military kept _very_ close tabs on, they would not have connected the dots. Still, Hojo Mori, the mad bastard, had kidnapped twenty Guides before he was caught and put down. The rescue team had been forced to execute him when he used some sort of experimental pheromone bomb to drive the Sentinels mad.

That’s where you came in.

The pheromone bomb worked, and the Sentinels began attacking indiscriminately; except the Bonded did not touch their Guides. The regular humans resisted them bravely, firing only to incapacitate, but a lucky stray bullet hit the control panel instead of the shoulder it had been fired at. You awoke to gunfire, lying naked on a cold metal slab, with mechanized steel limb restraints open.

Confused, frightened, and alarmed, you got up with great difficulty and followed the sound of gunshots. You could feel Sentinels at the edge of your awareness, enraged, maddened, and under it all, you could feel their horror. Nude, awkward, you stumbled into the room. The Sentinels stopped and fell to the floor, following the dull thudding of the normal soldiers. Only the Bonded Guides remained standing, though they acted as if they were Atlas trembling under a weight too great.

Still too befuddled from the lingering drugs and the surreal scene, you did what you do best; you projected peace, serenity, and the quiet order for resistance to quell itself. You became the anchor that forcefully tied each and every one of them to reality, to the grounding of themselves, and you tightened the ropes as they struggled to break away from your pull.

All but one of the Guides fell at the escalation, eyes rolling up in their sockets, and you retreated your projection and grounding anchor in stunned confusion. The lone man gasped. “Please… No more. You’re killing them!” His words were too much after this terrible awakening, and you fainted.

Later you learned, from the same government agent(“My name is Phil,”) what had happened to you.

Hojo kidnapped you as part of an experiment to see if one could weaponize Guides. Hojo labored to see if projection and such could be used to fell regular humans, mutants, and Sentinels and Guides alike. The only viable defense against Guide projection was a more powerful Guide or empath, and even then that defense could be overcome with enough force, making it a dangerously seductive idea to madmen like Hojo Mori.

Most of the Guides that Hojo acquired died terrible deaths, Phil said quietly, that a few particularly unfortunate ones were either brain dead or insane. Only you came out alive and sane.

 

Hojo’s notes were encrypted, incomplete, and the government couldn’t make any sense of them. They only knew what his goal was because you survived. Phil speculated the madman kept most of his work only in his mind, which would explain why even the decrypted notes were essentially babelfish, but he did tell you what they found.

All of his victims were unbonded, which was expected, though you were the only one that had Affinity troubles. You were Hojo’s last victim, and you weren’t as powerful as some of the Guides he had acquired. You had the worst empathy of all of his test subjects, and Hojo had been picking ones with smaller amounts of empathy for awhile. Hojo had required a certain amount of skill in projecting, which you just made before the modifications. And most puzzling of all, you were the only one Hojo ever kept completely and utterly unconscious.

The reason they knew this was mostly because Hojo had also employed a telepath, one they had captured alive. The telepath turned out to be disloyal to Hojo’s cause, and in exchange for all she knew, Taskin Tusti talked. Hojo had found her via the underground black market, and hired her to wipe his subjects’ memories in a particular way. Phil played the recording of the interrogation for you.

 

* * *

“Yeah, Hojo, I worked for him. Yes, that is the creepy bastard I worked for. What? My purpose? Well, to erase the memories of his test subjects in the manner he specified.

Why? See, Hojo wasn’t big on explaining things, especially to me, who he considered to be beneath him and unworthy to behold his specimens. But I gathered enough to figure out some of it. Huh? No, he never told me what he was trying to achieve exactly. Now let me finish! Yeesh.

Hojo mostly wanted me to erase the person, the personality that operates the body, but not to touch anything else. He said he wanted them to be pliable, able to follow orders, not useless lumps of semi-cognizant flesh. So that’s what I did. But between me and Hojo, we killed most of the subjects if they were too fresh from his tampering.

He claimed it was something about the Bonding. That somehow his “improvements” made the Guides automatically try to Bond with me as a last ditch attempt of self-preservation. I’m not a Sentinel though, I’m a mutant and it’s not possible to be both as far as anyone knows. And with all of Hojo’s experimentation the shock, or whatever it was, killed them nearly instantly.

Took until Number 15 for us to figure out the time between experiments needed before the Guide wouldn’t die instantaneously. Which is 15? Uh, lemme see. Yeah, that one. Not the violently crazy one, the one that’s completely brain dead

Hojo said it was the same issue as we’d run into before, but we’d spaced it out enough that only the brain was killed. Number 16 is the one that’s comatose with a partially destroyed brain. Number 17 is the crazy one that’s suicidal, and Number 18 was that violent psycho. Number 19 seized every time we tried the process, and eventually Hojo just gave up on it and used it as a preliminary test subject for whatever he planned to do. If a subject survived, but Hojo deemed them failures, that was typically their fate.

Hmm? Why am I referring to the specimen as it? Hojo ingrained it into me, started playing with his syringes and thinking about vivisection when I slipped up. I stopped real quick.

 

Oh, _now_ you’re asking why I don’t know everything that went on in his mind?

Dude, Hojo was one sick, twisted, fucked-in-the-head puppy. I did _not_ want his brain touching mine, so I made it a point to keep far, far away from his gray matter unless he started getting twitchy. Whenever he got twitchy Number 19 tended to get a lot of pointlessly painful testing, supposedly to ensure Number Twenty wouldn’t die on him too soon.

Who are you talking about now? Oh, _her_ , Number 20. Yeah, Hojo chose her specially, though he never told me why. Kept her unconscious the entire time, though none of the others got that luxury. I think he was trying out a idea of his about the process, he was more careful with her.

I started early with Number 20, loosening the association between her identity and her name. Why that specifically? Names tend to embody our identity, we bind it to a name because it’s us and its ours. Without a name, identity becomes vulnerable to any immediate manipulation. But Hojo interrupted me before I could do complete the job.

What will it cause? Eh, she’ll never really respond to that name again, not without a lot of time and effort; even then, probably not.

 

Now what else do you want to know?”

* * *

 

 

Well that had explained why you never paid attention to your given name anymore, and why it took so long to figure out someone was talking to you. After the debriefing Phil explained Hojo had had some success.

You now constantly projected a field of peace the strongest Guides would covet. It was nearly impossible to physically hurt you, since any violence against you was neutralized(by knock out or forced peacefulness) before it could happen. Essentially Hojo had made you powerful and nearly invulnerable.

And if you weren’t careful, your power could make someone so calm their heart slowed to a halt, or simply render the heart muscle so relaxed it didn’t pump at all. Yeah. It’s just as wonderful as it sounds. It’s your fondest wish that you had been able to carve him up, just as carefully as he had worked his scalpel on you, for daring to have done this to you.

After Phil got you up to speed, the government gave you the job you had always wanted... At a ultra-secret hospital that catered to some stupidly powerful and nearly crazy unbonded Sentinels and Guides, along with anyone or anything else the government wanted the best _secret_ care for. You kept the Sentinels calm and grounded, the Guides from driving the Sentinels wild and affecting the normal humans, the others from flipping out and doing whatever it was they could do; you were probably the most recognizable person in the whole facility.

It wasn’t your dream job then, and it still wasn’t, because it never seemed like your patients ever got any better. In fact, having you there just made the healing process speed up, and thus the cycle of injury-recovery-fieldwork just spun faster. The whole thing was difficult to cope with, and the continually reappearing patients eventually just laughed at it all as you reprimanded them for being such frequent visitors. That one Sentinel, the one Phil often hovered around like a mother hen or a worried Guide, he was there after nearly every mission; he was unusually susceptible to zone-outs, and his zoning was difficult to combat.

But all that practice and controlled isolation did benefit you. It gave you the time needed to safely learn how to control your increased power and unconscious projection field. Sentinels and Guides now tended to be immune to the tightly controlled field you still projected, especially Bonded, and even the regular humans could get away pretty much unscathed; they only reported feeling a little more relaxed after being in your presence. Of course, if you got upset… Everyone got a Guide-assisted timeout, or even a free instant nap.

And there was another bonus to basically having no life except a very demanding and time consuming job. With all the practice that damn hospital gave you, you now could dominate your field with ease.

Of course that was being a bit presumptuous. The government had you so classified, and under so much security, it was a wonder you still had _any_ record of your existence. It was beginning to chafe and irritate though, to be under such watchful, controlling eyes. Phil didn’t help at all, no matter how nice he was to you or how funny he could be on his good days. You didn’t really know him, and he wasn’t more than a friendly acquaintance since he never came to visit without needing your help for something.

 

You eyed the offer from one Pepper Potts to come and be Tony Stark’s personal grounder and pacifier, the one you shouldn’t have, and from the woman who shouldn’t have ever have found out about you. It was generous in every way you could look at it, though it did specify that unless you or Tony decided you would no longer work him, you would be his employee/nurse/Guide until he Bonded. The contract was binding, few loopholes to escape through, but there were plenty of ways to opt out if you ever actually needed to.

You wondered if this might break the string of misfortune that had been haunting you since Hojo Mori picked you out from all other Guides.

Tony Stark would be a challenge, difficult to handle, and thoroughly traumatized by his kidnapping. He would probably dislike you because Pepper Potts was going around his pride and hiring you, despite his repeated claims of wellbeing. He would be different, and you could gradually reintegrate into life with a steady job and secured housing.

As if to decide for you, your spirit animal appeared. He wasn’t a clingy spirit guide, not one for being dependent was your komodo dragon, but he was protective and sneaky. He frequently gave you a look at the other spirit animals that you wouldn’t see otherwise. It was kind of his way of helping you gain an advantage, though it was more often disconcerting to see the dissonance between the spirit animals and the people they guided. You would never understand how that Sentinel Phil always hung around with wound up with a kangaroo. Never ever.

Your komodo dragon though, he was always a wonderful guide. (You smiled as he looked at you in a pleased fashion.) He was a massive example of his species before Hojo’s experimentation, and he grew and changed in accordance with your altered Guide abilities. Before it all, he was 9 feet 5 inches long and would have weighed around 370lbs if he was corporal, with a darker coloration than most komodo dragons had.

Now he was nearly a matte black with the typical golden striations along his thickened scales, and had simply expanded in size, which meant a bigger _everything_. He now came in at a whopping 14 feet 6 inches in length and would likely weigh in at nearly 500lbs. Despite his magnificent new size, he was still a stealthy little bugger like all komodo dragons. That kangaroo still never saw him coming, and never managed to avoid the sharp teeth from gently worrying at his tail.

Impatiently he flicked his long tail at your arm, catching your attention. He apparently wanted to tell you something. He smacked his front left foot down by your cell phone, flicked his tongue at you, and disappeared to do whatever spirit animals did whenever they thought their human could manage without them.

You picked up the phone and dialed the number Pepper Potts had left on the job offer. The government didn’t own you, and they certainly wouldn’t be able to hide you if Pepper Potts kicked the media into a frenzy about a Guide being held against their will. And your past with the government and Hojo? God, it would be worse than Watergate and the Iranian Hostage Situation combined.

 

You smiled.

 **  
**This was going to be an exciting adventure, you were sure.


	2. Please Take Heed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just some information for anyone interested. It's primarily about the little mini-verse Sankofa effectively created, and that means Pairings and ect.

Hi there everyone! This isn't a proper chapter, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, but this is for the readers.

 

Essentially I wanted to inform you guys about whom will end up Bonding to You. AKA, Pairings. There's two main paths I will be touching on for this 'verse; 1. Pairings, 2. You functions as an observer conduit for this 'verse so I can do some worldbuilding.

 

Primarily, I will be dealing with the Second path, and plan to go through the new Marvel movie 'verse up to Winter Soldier. So far, I haven't decided on making any pairing(for You,) Canon for my 'verse. I'll probably deal with pairings as one-shots. Or I might make a mini-series for a pairing that happens in a AU of my AU, if I feel there's more to be touched on with a certain pairing.

 

Ergo, the next installment(which I **am** working on,) will **not** have Tony Bonding with You. Just as a heads-up.

 

Of course, opinions and questions as welcomed, and I will try my best to get back to you as quickly as I can.

 

**Pairing** **Options** :

The Human Avengers:Tony, Steve, Natasha, Clint, Bucky, and Bruce( _Warning:_ I have plans for this pairing if I do go there, and it _will_ _not_ be a happy path.)

SHIELD: Maria Hill, Fury, and Phil. (I don't watch the SHIELD TV show, so no dice.)

Asgardians: Thor, Loki, Sif, Volstagg, Fandral, Hogun, and Heimdall(for the sheer bizarreness.)

**Technically the X-Men as well, but they will be de-mutantified and Sentinel-ified if they turn out to be popular for whatever reason.

Any other pairing would have to be suggested, and I'd have to see if I could work it.    

 

Thanks for reading this, and hope you'll enjoy the next installment! 

 


End file.
